Data Sources

R Census Data Fundamentals

November 25, 2024, 2:00pm
In this workshop, we provide an overview of conducting U.S. Census data analysis and visualization in R. First, we’ll cover the basic concepts of U.S. Census Data. Then, we’ll demonstrate how to call the census data API directly from R by using the R tidycensus package.

Exploring Rental Affordability in the San Francisco Bay Area Neighborhoods with R

November 5, 2024
Taesoo Song
by Taesoo Song. Many American cities continue to face severe rental burdens. However, we rarely examine rental affordability through the lens of quantitative data. In this blog post, I demonstrate how to download and visualize rental affordability data for the San Francisco Bay Area using R packages like `tidycensus` and `sf`. This exercise shows that mapping census data can be a straightforward and powerful way to understand the spatial patterns of housing dynamics and can offer valuable insights for research, policy, and advocacy.

Aaron Culich

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Consulting Areas: Python, R, SQL, AI & LLMs, APIs, Cloud & HPC Computing, Informatics, Data Wrangling, Databases & SQL, Bash or Command Line, Git or Github, Web Scraping

Concepts and Measurements in Social Network Analysis

October 22, 2024
Christian Caballero
by Christian Caballero. We live in an interconnected world, more so now than ever. Social Network Analysis (SNA) provides a toolkit to study the influence of this interconnectivity. This blog post introduces some key theoretical concepts behind SNA, as well as a family of metrics for measuring influence in a network, known as centrality. These concepts and measurements help form the basis for a theoretically informed study of social relationships in an era where the availability of relational data has dramatically increased thanks to technological advances.

Python Web Scraping

October 24, 2024, 2:00pm
In this workshop, we cover how to scrape data from the web using Python. Web scraping involves downloading a webpage's source code and sifting through the material to extract desired data.

Python Web APIs

October 22, 2024, 2:00pm
In this workshop, we cover how to extract data from the web with APIs using Python. APIs are often official services offered by companies and other entities, which allow you to directly query their servers in order to retrieve their data. Platforms like The New York Times, Twitter and Reddit offer APIs to retrieve data.

Leveraging Large Language Models for Analyzing Judicial Disparities in China

October 8, 2024
Nanqin Ying
by Nanqin Ying. This study analyzes over 50 million judicial decisions from China’s Supreme People’s Court to examine disparities in legal representation and their impact on sentencing across provinces. Focusing on 290 000 drug-related cases, it employs large language models to differentiate between private attorneys and public defenders and assess their sentencing outcomes. The methodology combines advanced text processing with statistical analysis, using clustering to categorize cases by province and representation, and regression models to isolate the effect of legal representation from factors like drug quantity and regional policies. Findings reveal significant regional disparities in legal access driven by economic conditions, highlighting the need for reforms in China’s legal aid system to ensure equitable representation for marginalized groups and promote transparent judicial data for systemic improvements.

Anna Björklund

Senior Data Science Fellow 2024-2025, Data Science Fellow 2023-2024
Linguistics

I am a fifth-year PhD student in the Department of Linguistics with an areal interest in the Wintuan languages, traditionally spoken in the northern Sacramento Valley and now undergoing revitalization. My primary research interests are in leveraging archival recordings for the phonetic analysis of these under-documented languages, as well as designing tools to assist in their revitalization. I have worked as a linguistic consultant for the Paskenta Band of Nomlaki Indians since 2020 and the Wintu Tribe of Northern California since 2022. I received my MA in linguistics from UC...

Alex Ramiller

Senior Data Science Fellow 2024-2025, Data Science Fellow 2023-2024
City and Regional Planning

I am a PhD Candidate in City and Regional Planning. My research focuses on the use of large administrative datasets to study residential mobility, neighborhood change, and housing access. I received a Master in Geography from the University of Washington and a Bachelor's in Economics and Geography from Macalester College. I have also consulted on analytical projects for several organizations including the San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank, PolicyLink, and the City of Seattle.

Excel Data Analysis: Introduction

October 2, 2024, 2:00pm
This is a three-hour introductory workshop that will provide an overview of Excel, with no prior experience assumed. Attendees will learn how to use functions for handling data and making calculations, how to build charts and pivot tables, and more.